


Press Pause; Release

by shortitude



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Don't Touch Lola, F/M, Make Out In Lola, S2 Finale Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 11:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4219767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the drive back, it’s her and Coulson and Lola, like the three musketeers from back in the day when things were far easier (when all she’d been was an orphan secretly trying to spy on spies).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Press Pause; Release

**Author's Note:**

> My first Skoulson fic; I've been a part of this fandom for years, and In It To Win It with this ship since the first day. The first fic for a ship you've got all the love in the world for is the hardest, therefore I ask that you ignore however awkward it could be. I'll do better. I'll try to do better.

On the drive back, it’s her and Coulson and Lola, like the three musketeers from back in the day when things were far easier (when all she’d been was an orphan secretly trying to spy on spies). The sun is in the sky, and Coulson’s voice is quiet and gentle as he talks her through powering up Lola’s flight systems. When it actually works, he gives her a rare smile – maybe one of the first since she saw him leave her in the cabin, and she tries to memorize that look on his face. It will be sweet to remember it in the days of separation to come, and the days when the both of them will inevitably fall prey to the skeletons in their closets.

It’s a good thing Lola practically flies herself, and there’s nothing to run her into this high up, or they would’ve had a problem. Gazes fixed on what’s happening ahead, they both allow an odd sort of silence settle over them. It’s only after glancing at him a few times that she realizes why it’s odd: it’s awkward, like her and Coulson rarely _are_.

And yet, she comes to realize, it feels like this is exactly what they’ve been around one another ever since she said goodbye to him with a hug, in front of the whole team, way before San Juan.

Somehow, Coulson seems to pick up on her discomfort, maybe from the way she squirms in her seat and grips Lola’s wheel a little tighter, because he turns towards her, face full of concern.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

For a brief moment, she envisions how the situation would go: _Yeah, Phil, let’s talk about our relationship, what even_ is _that?_ followed by the world’s longest silence. Thankfully, she reminds herself that he can’t read minds – she’s still holding out for a psychic, for the record – and he probably means talk about the other thing.

(They leave Cal to his new, shiny, hopefully peaceful life. Seeing her father off with a smile, being watched by him with eyes that don’t recognize who she is, has been both a relief and an unexpectedly bitter pill to swallow. Selfishly, a part of Skye – the little girl the nuns had called Mary Sue, the girl who kept being shipped right back to St. Agnes after only a few months, time and _time_ again – actually had dared to dream about what it would be like. To have those science fair days, to be taught how to flip a pancake by dear-old-pops. Sadly, every time that part of Skye tried to wonder, the thick-skinned side of her remembered Jiaying.

Before he undergoes the TAHITI procedure that will grant him a fresh new start, Cal tries to explain to her that her mother hadn’t been evil. Scared, desperate, wronged and gone down a violent path; but she’d also been kind once, gentle and understanding and _so very loving_.

“Try to remember her like that, Skye,” he begs her; her father, looking suddenly defenseless.

It makes her throat close up on a choke, and she nods briefly; quietly, she adds, “Daisy.” And from the way his face lights up, that one last time, she knows she has taken a rock off his chest. After that, she leads him down the hallways, the last walk they take as father and daughter.)

Coulson is patient, as he’s always been with her until now, so he doesn’t push for more. (Then again, she doesn’t push him to talk about his missing hand and how it makes him feel. There’s Andrew for that – well, there will be when he comes back from his vacation with May.) He doesn’t look disappointed or upset, either, when she gently shakes her head and steers the car to go down.

Beneath them, a long and sinuous road splits the dry landscape in two; there are no cars below them, thankfully, so nobody will be shocked by the sight of a flying red Corvette.

“Tell me again how to land her? I’ve got a sudden craving for ice-cream.”

\--

Here’s the thing, she reasons with herself: from now on she will go back to being Agent Skye, whose father does not lead a new life as a veterinary doctor, whose mother did not try to end the human race because of her pain and her fear. She’s going to be Agent Skye, in charge of the Caterpillars, whatever they may end up being; whether it’s going to be a secret superhero group or it’ll just be a rehab circle for people who have awoken to new abilities or it’ll be the new sanctuary for the Inhumans who – as Lincoln had put it – weren’t evil, just lost. That’s a lot of responsibility, and if there’s one thing she’s learnt from people with responsibility weighing them down is that at one point, they all have to consider pushing their own feelings down.

So, for the good of the future, Skye doesn’t talk about how it hurt quite a lot more than she’d expected to say goodbye to Cal. She doesn’t bring up another apology for all that her mother had done, all the loss Skye had brought onto her little SHIELD family since the start. She lands Lola (perfectly, to Coulson’s pride and silent joy), and drives them to the nearest diner for ice-cream.

In this side of the country, it’s hot enough that even small diners right off the highway have some sort of ice-cream, and with Lola parked safely in the shade between two large trucks, the two of them pick a quiet corner table away from the windows and order the house’s sundae.

Coulson stands out in his suit more than his fancy car stands out in the parking lot, but he manages to make it look smooth and cool. It makes Skye smirk a little.

Prompted by his curious look, she explains: “I was wondering how many secret meetings you’d conducted in diners before to be able to blend in even in your snazzy suits.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle in mild amusement, and Skye guesses that means many.

“Do you have a list of favourites?” she pushes on. (It’s easier, to just be _this_ version of herself around him right now; the easygoing Skye, the Skye who asks all the questions and makes them sound like she’s flirting with the boss.) “I bet you do. I bet you’ve mapped them all out.”

“It’s a useful list,” he concedes, an indulging little smile on his face.

“Maybe we could meet up in one of them.” This happens without thinking, the thought out of her mouth and solidifying between them.

Here’s another thing she’s not discussing: she knows what project Caterpillars means. At one point, when it’ll stop being just her in that folder, she’ll be travelling the world to find people like her, or _her_ people. Once again, they’ll have to say goodbye to one another, frequently. Maybe on this occasion, the outcome will not be as dramatic, but who can safely bet on anything in their business?

She licks her lips, unaware of the gesture until it seems to draw Coulson’s attention down to her mouth, and with a knot in her stomach she tries to play the rest of it cool. “Though I guess now, you’re not that inconspicuous in most of these sorts of places.”

He makes a humming sort of noise, like he’s considering it; considering her and him meeting up in these beaten down diners for coffee and secret plans talk. “I could wear jeans.”

Perfectly timed, their sundae arrives just then, so Skye has a moment to recover from the mental image of Coulson in casual wear. Coulson in _jeans_ , she thinks, would probably be as weird as it sounds attractive.

\--

The deviation off-course only sets them back an hour at most, and it’s not as if they’re expected back on base yet.

It’s honestly not her plan to keep the Director away from his duties, not when it’s been brought to her attention by Agent Weaver that she is clearly a distraction to the man. (Agent Weaver had been curt, to the point, and way off base with the implication that she was projecting her need for a father on Coulson. Skye hadn’t had the patience to explain herself, nor the nerve. With things like those, assumptions like those, it’s always been easier to just let people keep thinking.)

But the weather is on their side, and maybe so are the circumstances.

They take their time to finish the ice-cream, and they take their time to pay the check, and Skye takes her time to start Lola’s engine again. With both of them strapped in, the engine off, there’s a moment when the silence almost threatens to engulf.

“Would you still ask me that question now?” she breaks the quietness between them. Coulson turns in his seat to look at her, his right hand reaching down to keep the project folder from slipping from his lap. She interprets his look to mean _what question_ , so here in the middle of anonymous nowhere, where they could potentially only be Skye and Phil for a moment, she gives her confusion a voice. “When I was in quarantine, you asked me if I ever felt like running away. Why ask me that?”

(Here’s the thing, she reasons with herself: the main reason they work well together is because they have never tried to dig deeper and give an explanation to what motivated either of them. She’s breaking their unspoken rule now, but after everything that’s happened and all those times in the past weeks she had to confront herself with the fear of never seeing Coulson again, perhaps it’s time.)

“You didn’t deserve to be there.” Coulson glances away for a moment, a flash of something she can’t read crossing his face. “ _Nobody_ deserved to be there.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, slowly, “but you wouldn’t offer any other Agent the chance to get away like that.”

 _Nailed it_ , she thinks, when she sees his shoulders slump a little. “No,” he confirms, quietly.

“Can we be real, for a moment? Like – right here, in this place in the buttcrack of nowhere, can we be real and open with each other, for a change?” She doesn’t plan on sounding annoyed, frustrated, but her words accelerate the more she speaks. It’s nerves, she comes to realize.

It’s the same sort of nerves that reflect in his face. He looks down, deep in thought, and she knows where she’s looking – which part of himself he’s looking at – from the way he frowns. Without thinking twice, she reaches out and touches her fingertips very lightly to his elbow, over the harness.

Quietly, “Coulson?”

“All right.” He looks up at her, like he’s steeling himself for the worse that’s to come.

That’s the thing with ‘being real’; in the end, neither parts really want to hear the things they’ve felt comfortable keeping to themselves, but both parts need to. Skye, this time, presses on with a seemingly non sequitur. “Weaver told me I compromised you.”

Because they’re being real, brutally honest, it takes Coulson a pause and a twitch of his jaw to answer with: “You do.”

“Because you moved metaphorical mountains for me.”

“She hasn’t adapted well to the idea of no levels.”

“You asked me if I wanted to run – did you mean to ask if I’d run away with you?”

He’s stunned into silence, maybe because she’s not just scratching the surface anymore with her questions, but digging deep. These are her worries, her questions, and she’ll stand by them; she wants them answered, in words, not in suspicions. In the end, he does, but it’s so silent she thinks she imagined it when he says: “Yes.”

She forces herself to remember to breathe. “Would you ask me that again now?”

“ _Skye_ \--“

“I know, we have a lot left to do. We’ll always have a lot to do, the world will never be at zero risk and it’s up to us to protect it, shield it,” they both share a small smile here, after which she sobers up; “But I just – I’m wondering, if all that aside, you’d think of being alone with me somewhere.”

They both know what she’s asking, at least that’s what she thinks. It’s what she _hopes_ ; she knows why she’s asking it, she can only hope Coulson has read her as well as she’s read him since the first day.

“I think about it a lot,” he murmurs, finally, and touches her; his right hand covers hers, draws her hand away from his arm sling, and runs his thumb over her knuckles.

There’s a rush of everything that runs through her: joy and hope and yearning, all swirling around together and making her speak before thinking again. Quickly, she breathes out, “You know you mean the world to me, right?”

“I know.” He gives her that quiet smile, the one he’d given her in Banner’s cabin, before he’d left; neither of them knowing that a day would turn into weeks of separation, and both of them feeling like a day would already be too much.

“I mean like – you know I love you, right?” It’s so scary to say that finally, that for a moment she feels like she’s plunging to the ground from ten thousand feet aboard Lola and without a seatbelt; only no, Lola’s still on the ground between two trucks, engine cold. “I haven’t said that to anyone before,” she murmurs, more to herself than to him.

“I know.”

She makes a quiet little sound in the back of her throat, and leans over the gear shift. He leans in too, but brings his hand up to cup the side of her face, stopping them both before even their noses touch. “Skye,” he tries, and she knows.

“I know,” she tells him, firmly. “We have a duty to fulfill. You’re going to tell me we have to put the mission ahead of ourselves, and I get it – I get it, but maybe every now and then I’m going to selfishly remember this, okay?”

His thumb brushes over one corner of her mouth, and she darts her tongue out to taste him before she can control herself; it surprises them both, this level of _laissez faire_ in the two of them, given how good they are at being self-control freaks.

“Actually…” His voice is low, deep, a lot like what she’s imagined Coulson would sound like after being kissed (and yes, _yes_ , she’s imagined that). He leans in, the tip of his nose brushing against hers in the faintest imitation of an Eskimo kiss. His next words fall almost across her lips, every breath from his mouth falling against hers. “I was going to ask you if I could kiss you.”

“Oh god, yes, kiss me,” she rushes out, and twists her hand around his tie and tugs him over to her mouth.

  
He fits, like she’s known he would since before she’d come to terms that she had the hots for Agent Coulson (back when he’d still _been_ Agent Coulson, bent over her wrist and deactivating her bracelet with a small smirk despite his wounds, making her heart clench with an “I thought you’d like that”). What doesn’t fit is Lola between them, but two very resourceful people such as the two of them can figure it out.

He tugs on her lower lip with his teeth at the same time he pushes his seat back with the pull of a lever, and she undoes her seatbelt with merely the _thought_ of it. And that’s how she ends up climbing over to straddle his lap, in a dingy parking lot of an isolated highway diner, and he reaches up to bury his fingers in her hair as if they’ve never left her. She leans in closer, accidentally leaning her weight against his left arm, and he flinches a little under her.

Scared she’s hurt him, she breaks the kiss and pulls back. (He looks good like this, she thinks; looking up at her a little disheveled and ready to devour her whole. God, does he look good.) “Slower?” she asks, for the two of them.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and they both understand why. He extracts his hand from her hair, but runs his thumb down her jawline slowly, stalling. “I _would_ move metaphorical mountains for you, Skye.”

She thinks this means that he loves her too. She thinks the way he looks at her next tries to say that, because they can’t compromise themselves that far; it’s the very definition of the _opposite_ of slow.

Still, she can’t help the little smug smile that overtakes her expression, or the way she wants to fling her hair over her shoulder. “I know.” He smiles back, and she thinks, _no, this is the Coulson I want to remember for later_. “You know, I could move _literal_ mountains for you.”

He gets his look in his eyes, and curls his fingers over the nape of her neck to pull her down, that she almost wants to ask if it turns him on to think of that. (If she squirmed a little in his lap, she’d have her answer.)

Unfortunately, that’s also when the Lola’s phone rings, and the spell snaps, broken.

She climbs off him and back into the driver’s seat, and he looks at her a little dejected and with what she now knows is want. Even though she straps her seatbelt on again, and he pushes the button to take the car, she knows that this isn’t over here, that there’s no need for her to ask if it is.

 _Later_ , he mouths at her, and turns towards the screen that pops out from Lola’s dashboard looking like Director Coulson again.

Mack, on the other side of the screen, does not look like his usual self. “Sir, something happened with Agent Simmons.”

Skye starts the engine, and floors it out of there. _Later_ it is.

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for the great Skoulson writers out there (we have many of you); and **Sarah** , who will read this and hopefully approve.


End file.
